Atelier (franchise)/YMMV: Difference between revisions

* [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|Americans Love Mana Khemia]]: In Japan, the two Mana Khemia games received a fairly lukewarm reception from the established fanbase, and ''Mana Khemia 2'' received a lot of flak from reviewers. In the West, on the other hand... well, just take a gander at which of the dedicated game pages is longest and which one received so much attention as to warrant its own character page (and reportedly sold ''better'' in the West than it did in Japan). ''MK 2'' also got a ''much'' warmer reception from the Western press than it did in Japan, scoring slightly ''higher'' on average than ''MK 1'' did. (This may have something to do with those [[Game Breaking Bug|Game Breaking Bugs]] getting fixed for us, though.)

* [[Broken Base]]: In some ways, the Arland games are causing this. Certain fandom sections, like those found at [[Sankaku Complex]], basically describe the Arland games (and thus the wider franchise) as "[[H-game|eroge without the actual ero bits]]" and are mostly in it for [[Fan Service|the girls]] and, uh, [[A Date with Rosie Palms|what they can do]] [[Squick|with them]]. This makes many older Atelier fans '''bristle with rage''', as the games have ''never'' been intended to be erotic; [[Ms. Fanservice|Marie's odd chest... thing]] aside, the hottest any pre-Iris game got was having Lilie in a nightgown for one scene. <ref>And really, the hottest any ''post''-Iris game got was a chest-and-up [[Barbie Doll Anatomy]] scene of Lita in a tank in ''Iris 1''.</ref> The actual Arland games don't help ''at all'', either; on the one hand, there's the occasional scene with, uh, [[media:atelier_tentacle_ohdear_5207.jpg|what can only be called "overtones"]] (possibly nsfw), but on the other hand many scenes seem dedicated to making ''fun'' of this kind of nonsense in the same way [[Ar tonelico]] does. At this point many people aren't quite sure what to think, but the debate [[Flame War|rages on]].

* [[Ensemble Darkhorse]]: In a franchise as big as this one, you'd expect this to happen a few times, and it certainly has.

** The one most Americans will be familiar with is Veola from ''Atelier Iris 1''; there are [[Epileptic Trees|suspicions]] that said game might have started life as "Atelier Veola" and then gotten development shifted partway through into what it is now. The result, though, is that this one shopkeeper, who doesn't seem all that important initially, has as much story content tied to her as the ''main plot'', and many find it ''more'' engaging than the actual plot of AI 1. A lot of people don't play the game for Klein or Lita, they play it for Veola, and she's far and away the most popular character both in Japan and overseas.